♪ >> what is that? >> first tonight, i have a 34esage to conservatives in this country. >> mom always said. >> we have to stop being the stupid party. >> the point he made is exactly right. >> i don't see this as a rejection of our principles. >> we have to stop dumbing down everything. >> you built that business yourself. >> you did build that business. >> you built that small business. >> what is it? >> i think we need to do a better job to applying our principles. >> do you feel you have to give on something? >> we're all about trying to give and cooperate. >> this is an election that republicans are upset about because they feel like they could have won. >> it's time to get over it. stop whining. >> why do we have separate hockey leagues? you know, women should be out there playing ice hockey with the guys in the nhl. >> put your uniform back on. it's time to get back in the game. >> what is that? ♪

♪ don't worry, be happy >> we begin this afternoon with the gop. please be sympathetic. they are meeting together in north carolina for the first time since their november drubbing. and it does seem as though republicans are working through some of the five stages of grief, denial, anger, karl rove bargaining for ohio, a grim winter of depression, and are now moving slowly toward acceptance that something has gone badly wrong. but that's not to say anything is wrong with their leadership. oh, no. after all, today they've re-elected as chairman the man who presided over the many conspiracies of the 2012 campaign, reince priebus. mr. priebus appears to have done a little bit of new age soul searching. >> that's my agenda for the next two years, renew our party, grow

our ranks, and win elections. we must compete in every state and every region building relationships with communities we haven't before. in fact, i think we should just stop talking about reaching out and start working on welcoming in. >> reaching out, welcoming in, hands touching hands. apparently reince has been spending the last few months in a karaoke performing neil diamond, but louisiana governor bobby jindal was a bit less touchy-feely about the prospects for the party. >> we've got to stop being the stupid party. and i'm serious. it's time for a new republican party that talks like adults. it's no secret we had a number of republicans that damaged the brand in year with offensive and bizarre comments. i'm here to say we've had enough of that. >> so governor jindal wants to shred his i'm with stupidt shirt, and he doesn't want to trade it for any of that big

business bling either. >> we must quit big. we are not the party of big business, big banks, big wall street bailouts, big corporate loopholes or big anything. we must not be the party that simply protects the wello-off s they can keep their toys? >> do you remember mitt and ann romney? in a change of their schedule for selects drapes for their car elevator, they were celebrated in washington today. not by an inauguration as they'd hoped, but by a luncheon with top fund-raisers, including bill marriott. yes, the whole gang got back together with romney's former running mate paul ryan apparently also in attendance. imagine, right now we could all be crawling over the controversy of romney's own lip syncing of "america the beautiful" and preparing for ted nugent to be nominated as secretary of state. let's get right to our panel now in washington is dana milbank,

political columnist for "the washington post," and in philadelphia lehigh university professor james peterson, a contributor to thegrio.com. good afternoon to both of you. professor peterson, as the president was busy today working on immigration overhaul, the gop was trying very hard to stop being the stupid party, to stop being the big bucks party. all the while re-electing their leadership and celebrating a losing candidate with a fancy lunch. so what's wrong with that picture? >> i mean, once again i think they've got this all wrong. i mean, first of all, msnbc's own michael steele outperformed reince priebus in a lot of different ways when he was chairman of the party. so it's interesting reince got another crack at it after all the losses they sustained over the course of this election season. but they just have it all mixed up. they think they need to change their messaging. their messaging was very, very clear during the election season. their message to the 47%, their message in support of the 1%, their message to women and how they want to qualify rape.

their message to latinos and i am grant populations about putting up fences and not wanting folks to immigrate and their message to black folk with food stamp president comments and all the ways they wanted to limb voting for people of color. they were clear on their messaging. i think they have to think about how do they change their ideological constructions. >> you have just buried them, sir. >> dana, in his speech today reince priebus said a blue state is not a permanent diagnosis. and there is a plan for that, an electoral college shake-up. in, let's see, virginia, michigan, ohio, pennsylvania. now, even virginia's governor has said he opposes it, but why do you suppose those states would be targeted? >> i can't imagine why. >> help viewers understand why that might be. >> it's interesting that the party is saying that -- the leaders are saying their problem has been messaging. the real problem has been

democracy. people aren't voting for them. they have come up with a rather brilliant solution and that's to take the people out of the process. in these states, these very important swing states, they're finding a way basically to deliver these states to republican presidential candidates -- >> dana, they're finding a way to rig the process. that's what they're finding a way to do. >> if they're able to do this in virginia, for example, mitt romney got 47% of the vote, but under this system that they're planning to put in place, he would have gotten 70% of the electoral vote there. this is basically a coup by gerrymandering. the idea is -- and this is how the republicans have been able to keep the house of representatives, for example, even though they lost by a sizable amount the popular vote going to house candidates. they want to do the same thing in the presidential race, so the presidency is no longer affected by the way actual voters vote in an election. so it's a most novel strategy. one would think in the long run this won't work and it probably

won't even become the law in places like virginia and ohio. >> but professor peterson, on the one hand we have the re-elected chair saying he wants to reach out. he wants to welcome everyone, and on the other hand republicans are seeking to rig the system. i mean, who is being honest here? which side of the party are we supposed to believe? >> well, listen, the move to sort of establish this federal gerrymandering, one, should open the american populace's eyes to the way in which the states have been gerrymandered, but, two, it smacks of the same kind of sin stesh strategy and the political moves the republicans have been making recently, and i think we have to trust that because that's indicative of the kind of behavior they've engaged in in the past. they do have to stop talking about reaching out and actually reach out, right? what they really need, and i don't know if there are any strategists or consultants who can do this for them, they need some cultural competence in

their party. they need to understand how the culture of the people operate in these shifting demographic times and without those sort of core shifts and core sort of instruction for their party, i think they're kind of doomed to sort of live in this world where the fringe folk and the vocal minority in the party dictate and dominate the kind of policies, legislation they're interested in, and the kind of messaging they communicate to the american people. >> dana, to that point, your column this coming sunday, is a story about paul ryan's epic us a tear plan to balance the budget not no 30 years, but 10 years. take a listen to this. >> we know you won the presidential election, but you made your party into one of the most outrageous government dependent parties that we've ever seen in modern time. you have delivered less and less

from our economy, particularly for hispanics and african-americans. >> dana, the stock market is at a five-time high -- a five-year high. unemployment is at a five-year low. he says on the one hand he wants to reach out. you can see the shares in the dow jones right now. what is this man talking about? please, translate it because i'm not intelligent enough to understand it. >> there is apparently a bit of a mixed message occurring at the rnc winter meeting. >> in the very brain of the chairman. >> i think bobby jindal had a point where he said we need to stop being the party of austerity. we need to stop saying how good we can be at shrinking and cutting government. that is not a winning message. he's absolutely right about that. and then you have the party here in washington doing exactly what he said not to do, and you have

paul ryan coming forward and saying, yes, i'm going to -- we lost the election so i'm actually going to double down on this. i'm going to cut 40% of the federal government out over the next ten years because that's exactly what the people want to hear and if they don't like it, we'll arrange the electoral college so we'll win anyway. >> professor? >> it doesn't make demographic sense. we know the numbers. we know that the red states, and there are a lot of poor white people as well, there are a lot of older white people as well. it just doesn't make sense to try to divide the country in this way. because of the economic downturn this country took under a republican president, we're still in recovery, and that's why the federal government has to intervene through medicare and social security. the safety net has to be strengthened but it's not just strengthened for black and latinos. look at the map of your own states. understand the demographics. look at the sort of federal sort of trade-off with the red states in this country and you'll understand that you've got to speak to your own constituents to try to say it's black and

latino folk who are the beneficiaries of federal spend something not only inaccurate but it's a miscal clition in terms of understanding the quaeti constituency of the republican party. >> lindsey graham said the republicans aren't generating enough angry white guys to stay in power. it will describe them as fr freeloade freeloaders. that's not going to work. >> i think it's fair to say the republicans have sort of cornered the market on the angry white guy vote. there's not a whole lot more upside they can have there. and that's the issue here is if you look at where demographics are going, it's latinos are going to be the dominant force in politics here and the angry white guy, particularly the angry southern white guy, is becoming a shrinking piece of that. you see the instinct going on right now is to protect that through this gerrymandering,

through this changing of the rules and the electoral college. the idea is to sustain the advantage the republicans for as long as possible but ultimately they're just rearranging the deck chairs here if they're not keeping up with where the country is going. ultimately they can only defy gravity for so long. >> dana milbank, professor james peterson, thank you so much. next, perhaps the most preposterous comments on a woman's body you have ever heard. stay with us. ...so as you can see, geico's customer satisfaction is at 97%. mmmm tasty. and cut! very good. people are always asking me how we make these geico adverts. so we're taking you behind the scenes. this coffee cup, for example, is computer animated. it's not real. country is going. r-animated coffee tastes dreadful. geico. 15 minutes could save you 15 % or more on car insurance.

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if you have any new ideas on how to resuscitate the grand old party, republicans gathered in charlotte would love to hear from you because right now this is what they've got.

a republican legislator in new mexico who has proposed a law that would jail any woman who has an abortion after becoming pregnant during a sexual assault. the reason, well, she says that would be tampering with evidence. joining us now, as speechless as myself, hopefully not, ari melber, correspondent for "the nation" and my colleague chrkryl ball. they have no ideas on jobs, nothing to say about fixing immigration, but they want to criminalize abortion. are they legislating themselves into history as it were, into the backside of history? >> so farther, and this measure doesn't stand alone. you know, republicans in congress have also introduced legislation to defund planned parenthood, an organization that provides all sorts of services. abortion being the least of them. to women across the country. and i think what they've gotten

used to is an environment where they could get away with these things and no one would really make note but that has changed. 2011 was a bad year, a landmark year in a bad way in that we saw the largest number of restrictions on women's reproductive rights pass in state legislatures across the country and the response to that has been a backlash and a lot more attention paid to the type of legislation like what you're talking about here. so they're not going to be able to get away with it anymore. >> ari, you're a lawyer. i mean, what are these people suggesting? that somehow the woman who has already been the victim of a sexual assault should keep the child as evidence of the original crime? >> well, sb 206, this bill, is basically trying to read in an attack on abortion into the laws of evidence and preserving or tampering with evidence which can be a heavily restricted in the criminal context. i don't think the law is -- the legislation here is as bad as people said.

it refers to an intent to destroy, quote, evidence of the crime. all that really means is if someone was a perpetrator in a rape and then sought to compel or facilitate, that's the language in the bill, compel for facilitate an abortion, that would be an extra charge against them. so i don't think contrary so some of the criticism, my reading of the law is not na this targets victims. the problem here is to echo what crystal said, the problem is this constant, sneaky and anti-female attempt to make everything about restricting what is under the law a constitutional right. so my point here is not that this is good law. i would never vote for something like this if i was in the new mexico legislature. it reads so awkwardly because it's not an area that should have anything to do with the right to make those decisions yurds as a woman. >> okay. well, the gop has had a number of different ideas put forward recently, and here we have another one from bobby jindal

who describes how he would reduce government bureaucracy. >> we would have about a fourth of the buildings we have in washington, half of the government workers we've got in washington. we would replace most of its bureaucracy with a handful of good websites. >> we'd replace government with a handful of good websites. what is that man talking about? that's a governor. >> he should be delighted then to know that the president -- that government workers have decreased by 600,000 under this president. he should be delighted by that. i mean, it's an absurd proposition, and that's not to say that our bureaucracy is perfect, but they love to make government bureaucrats these evil do nothings, when, in fact, they provide vital services to the country. now, do you want to change the system so that there's more incentives to perform better, streamline efficiencies? sure. but the idea you're going to wipe out, you know, the department of agricultural and just replace it with a website is patently absurd. >> ari, the gop does have a

savior in the form of newt gingrich, and he has said that the party should not be angrily persistent nor repressively persistent, but happily persistent. now that sounds to me like good advice if you're covering with something like constipation, but the idea that that is the way forward? that's the newt gingrich idea, happy persistence. >> look, there's a long tradition of the happy warrior in american politics, but you have to be happily fighting for something that is clear, that is just, that is right, that people think will broadly improve their lives. and i think the problem that you've are a take lated and you made a good point in the first segment i want to underscore is this idea that the republican are looking to come up with something to sell the public after losing this election while also looking to get the public out of the voting process for them, right? this is fundamental. now, it sounds i'm just attacking them. no, you hit on something very

fundamentally, something people understand because they remember it in all the different ways that there was voter disenfranchisement. >> we discussed it repeatedly. >> they are not getting past it yet, and it's going to be a long time coming. i think the core problem here is the solutions that they have offered, whether it is something silly like, yes, we'll replace police with websites, okay, we'll replace public workers and teachers with websites, or the grand victories they have had that didn't work out. let's remember fiscal cliff, cutting government as krystal was pointing out, more than we already have, was something republicans had to get up and say we didn't mean it, we don't want it, it's too fast, it's bad for the economy. that panic we had was actually a failing of the core ideological promise they made in november. >> and to that point on economics, krystal, paul ryan to "the wall street journal" says, "the electorate did not reject our principles at the election."

>> okay. >> what did the electorate say then? they didn't like the way he looked? they didn't believe his marathon lies. >> they didn't like the obama phone they were given and the gifts they got from the president. >> what is this man talking about? >> paul ryan did say things like urban voters. he has that same view that mitt romney does about the 47% being takers and getting gifts from the government. that is his view, and so as long as you have that core understanding among paul ryan, who is supposed to be a leader of the republican party, they are not going to be able to evolve. they might be able to put on a happy smiley face according to newt gingrich, but they're not going to be able to evolve and come to grips with the reality of the fact that their ideology was and is still being rejected by the american electorate. >> ari melber, krystal ball, thanks. the vice president outlines a gun safety plan that makes sense and remember you can always follow us at any time on

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honey, i think you shrunk my pajamas. looks like he was up late watching nba on his phone again. why? do i look tired? no, you look like kevin durant. you look fine to me. really? he looks fine to you? go play. mommy's got some things for daddy to do. [ male announcer ] unlimited nba from sprint changes everything. get truly unlimited data from sprint. official wireless partner of the nba. from a historic inauguration and a clinton cool under fire to women on the front lines and republicans running scared. here are today's "top lines," the week in review. >> so help me god. >> congratulations, mr. president. ♪ >> we do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky. commitments we make to each other, they do not make us a nation of takers.

they free us. my oath is not so different from the pledge we all make. take it in one more time. ♪ bursting in air >> you all dress up pretty nice. ♪ obama is on fire >> i love michelle obama. ♪ so in love with you >> the less impressed i am with obama, it's not just me, it's everybody on fox news. >> the most partisan and divisive. >> collective action, community organizer. >> out of the closet. >> era of liberalism is back. >> radical [ bleep ]. >> shove news the dust bin of history. >> deep breathing exercises, soft jazz music. >> it's the conservative ghetto. we have to stop being the stupid party. >> hillary will be in the hot seat. >> i stood next to president obama as the marines carried those flag draped caskets. i was foe focused on keeping our

people safe. what difference at this point does it make. >> had i been president at the time i would have relieved you of your post. >> she opened up crying, which is part of the script. >> teflon? that's hillary clinton. >> not search going to be able to be a combat soldier, but everyone is entitled to a chance. >> in a prisoner of war situation. >> horrible things happen to men in prisoner of war situations. >> yeah. >> my colleagues and i are introducing a bill. >> i don't view it as gun control, i view it as gun safety. >> obama wants to turn the idea of absolutism into a dirty word. >> people are accusing me of having crazy eyes. >> do you want another concord bridge? i got some buddies. >> 45 shots in a minute. >> i know a lot about guns. >> roll with it. have some fun. tip of the day. >> let's get right to it. we're joined by toure, my colleague and the co-host of "the cycle" and by democratic strategist julian epstein. julian, the vice president was in richmond, virginia, today.

virginia tech, of course, was the scene of that horrific massacre in 2007 when 32 people were killed. but it's also the backyard of house majority leader eric cantor. is this the administration taking its campaign for gun safety to those places which have been most severely impacted by gun violence? >> well, that's right, and i think that this is part of what obama hinted at during the inaugural address when he basically said he was going to get down to business and he was going to take the case to the people and use pressure from the outside to break the obstructionism from the inside. i think this is the first sign that the administration means business on that. i also think it's very, very important that we not start out at sea with a big fish and come back to shore with a skeleton and that the pressure has got to be kept on with respect to assault weapons and large-scale magazines. the public supports, as you know, background checks on a scale of 90% but when it comes

to large magazines or clip it's about 70% and 60% when it comes to assault weapons. i think at the end of the day it will be the big test of the new obama paradigm, which is to go outside the beltway, build pressure out the beltway, and make the republican obstructionists pay a severe political price for obstructing what is a strong american voter public sentiment in favor of doing these common sense gun rules. >> toure, to julian's point, dianne feinstein introduced her bill, which is an assault weapons ban bill. as we saw in the latest polls, there's broad support, 58% for this. support among gun owning households is 45%. let's hear jay carney on the bill itself. take a listen to jay. >> the president supports renewal of the assault weapons ban. he supports addressing or limiting the magazine capacity

of ammunition -- the capacity of ammunition clips. the fact that they're hard, some harder than others, doesn't mean we shouldn't move forward on them. >> is that the acknowledgment of what julian was just saying, that in a sense they're going for everything, but if they've got to get it through the house, they're more likely to get some kind of rul on high capacity magazines than they are on assault weapons. >> the house does seem to be a potential problem, not just from the right but also from some on the left who are in rural areas. as julian was saying, there is tremendous support for the individual policies of the president, even "the washington post" polled republicans before the president announced these are going to be my policies, and they're showing overwhelming support for the things the president would say. 89% in favor of backgrounds, 61% in favor of a federal database. >> these are republicans? >> republicans. 59% in favor of a ban on high capacity magazines. even 45% in favor of a ban on assault weapons. now, of course, when the president comes out and says

this is what i want to do, they say, no, no, no, your package is horrible, you're taking away by gurns. it matters whose mouth it comes out of. i would urge the president to stay strong on all these proposals partly because public support is behind him, partly because the pro-gun right is gone for democrats and we have nothing to show for that. if you're going to be the gun control party, get something out of that, but also why do you go to d.c.? to do what's easy or to do things that might make a difference in americans lives? >> can i pick up on that for a second? >> please. >> in 1999 after columbine, i was intimately involved in this when we were trying to get gun legislation through the house. president clinton was a strong supporter of this. he was the leader. we had a real opportunity to get something passed, and the reason why we couldn't get a bill out of conference was at the end of the day we had some weak-kneed democrats who were very silently trying to undermine it, but we had a strategy where we were identifying 30 or 40 republicans where we could build a lot of

pressure to support what president clinton wanted to do in 1991 with respect to closing a lot of loopholes in the gun laws. the problem again was that we had weak-kneed democrats who undermined it. if democrats stay strong on this and if they target the right republican districts, you can basically break through the log jam, the bureaucratic log jam, that republicans will use by way of process in the house, and there are many ways to do it but it requires democrats say unified and secondly, that they identify vulnerable republicans and there are plenty of vulnerable republicans because some of these numbers that toure is citing applies to republicans and -- >> in those -- >> and the public opinion in their dirths. >> the other thing that the gun control left is going to need is money, and finally we have the beginnings of an unequal bank account that the nra has always outspend the gun control. now we have michael bloomberg involved and now we have steve jobs' widow happening out with gabby giffords pac.

finally the gun control side has money. >> the risk of congressional inaction -- just one moment -- >> every day people see us on this show, martin, and they say how wonderful it is that the martin bashir show is focusing on this issue. toure's point is exactly right. if you care about this issue, tell us you care about it by writing a check to one of the great organizations, the mayors group, there's about half a dozen groups that are doing important work. i intend to write a check for them and everybody watching who is interested and concerned about protecting our children and protecting your families and protecting your communities, you have to support these organizations that are doing important work. >> and your original point is absolutely right. the martin bashir point is wonderful. >> thank you. >> yes. >> but the risk of congressional action has prompted some mayors to start taking action. michael nutter of philadelphia, rahm emanuel of chicago. starting a devestment drive against gun makers. can i ask you, do you think that

will have much of an impact? >> i don't know how much of an impact that's going to have because we give so much money to the nra and to the gun lobby and to the bullet and gun manufacturers. they make so much money. and all these pushes that we're doing right now only helps them to drive up sales, a tremendous amount. the nra profits exactly from that because in a lot of places every gun you buy, $1 goes to the nra. so they are -- >> take i take a view on that. >> julian, don't you think actually this is an example of individual mayors doing what they can in the way that you were just promoting individual citizens should do what we can. >> exactly. and just a slightly different perspective. if you consider what happened with south africa apartheid, much of the leadership came from state and local levels when we began to have pressure to divest from organizations involved with south africa. same with tobacco. state attorneys general started suing the tobacco industry. when you think about the parallels between guns and

tobacco, the idea we have 30,000 gun related homicides every year as compared to only, as toure has cited before, 200 justifiable homicides, self-defense homicides with gun every year according to the justice department, 200 instances in which guns are used in justifiable homicides as compared to 30,000 gun related deaths each year. the same series tobacco. people begin to realize guns are doing more harm than good. you see a sea change at the state and local level and the state and local level can have enormous changes. >> toure and julian, gentlemen, thank you so much. coming up, eric cantor and paul ryan say we'll have a balanced budget in just ten years. balanced on the backs of whom? stay with us. >> we've done this before. >> are you happy, joel? >> it's as cold as ice -- it's as cold as ice. >> willing to sacrifice. >> my love. to grow, we have to boost our social media visibility.

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a judge has sided with republicans over the president today on his appointments to the national labor relations board. meanwhile, the transition continued at the white house with the president announcing his new pick for chief of staff. he also sat down for his first side-by-side interview with someone other than the first lady. let's get the latest from kristin welker who joins us this sunny afternoon -- sorry, snowy afternoon from the white house. kristin, i hope you're warm. a federal court in washington handed down a unanimous ruling today that invalidates the president's recess appointments to the nrlb. what was the basis for this ruling, and how is the white house going to appeal? >> reporter: good afternoon from a very snowy washington, d.c., martin. the basis for this ruling is essentially that the court is saying the senate was not in recess when this appointment was

made. they are saying that, look, the senate was in a pro forma session, so not technically in recess. the obama administration is pushing back against that, and they are saying that they believe the senate was in recess. why? because they were in a pro forma session which essentially means that there weren't senators here, they weren't conducting official business, but they were gaveling into session every few days. this, of course, occurred during the holidays of 2012. so the obama administration today saying that they strongly disagree with the court's ruling. they maintain that the senate was not in session, was essentially in recess when the president made those appointments. >> of course, many of us have been tempted to believe that even when there are senators and congressional members present, it's not actually functioning, but go on. >> reporter: right. and that is what the obama administration is arguing. that, look, the senate is not really functioning during these pro forma sessions. but in terms of whether the obama administration will appeal this, that is still a big

question mark. the justice department has not weighed in yet, martin. however, a lot of legal analysts believe that it is likely that they will appeal this decision, and that includes our own pete williams. so we'll have to see moving forward what happens. >> okay. we also hear, kristin, that the president and secretary of state, hillary clinton, are sitting down together for an interview today with "60 minutes." this comes after mrs. clinton met with the president away from cameras. these former opponents have certainly come a long way over the years, have they not? what do you hear about their relationship today? >> reporter: well, they have come a long way, and according to my sources here, they have a strong relationship, and they really share the same vision for how to move the country forward and also agree on a lot of issues, especially when it comes to foreign policy. i am told that they have a lot of trust in each other at this point in time. and interestingly, martin, i'm also told that they both share a sense of humor. that often when they're together, they will crack jokes,

make each other laugh, make others in the room laugh that are around them. it will be interesting to watch that interview. it comes amid a lot of speculation about whether secretary clinton will run for office in 2016. certainly an interesting photo-op. but a lot of people will be watching to see how they interact. >> kristin, you go back inside and get warm. thanks so much, kristin. next, let's get all wonky on paul ryan's latest budget talk. let's do it. [ fishing rod casting line, marching band playing ]

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to producing a budget that will balance in ten years. >> joining us now is jared bernstein, senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities and an msnbc contributor. welcome, sir. >> thank you. >> mr. ryan's original 30-year plan, as you know, jared, was balanced on the backs of the poor and the jobless. are you able to estimate for our viewers how catastrophic his new ten-year budget is likely to be for low-income workers, the disabled, the poor, and those currently unemployed? >> i think i can, and i think we start exactly where you did. the budget that the house now supports, the paul ryan budget, is a budget that doesn't balance until 2040, but it's a budget that takes trillions of dollars from low-income programs and funnels them to wealthy people along the way kicking tens of millions off the public insurance rolls, raising the eligibility age of medicare, bloc granting medicaid food assistance, cutting educational

programs. that's the one that balances in 2040. so what do you think a budget that balances in ten years from now is going to look like compared to that? obviously much worse. we're talking about cuts of up to 37% in government services as he know them, and, remember, you can't get a penny for these budgets from revenue. it all has to come from spending cuts, and the number i just cited takes social security, medicare, and defense off the table as they've stated. so we're talking about far deeper cuts than the ryan budget that you and i have bemoaned many a time here. >> so we're talking, okay, jared, about a 37% across the board cut. >> right. >> now, what was it about last year's election results that have led paul ryan to believe that he wasn't brutal enough the first time with the economy? >> exactly. this is the classical doubling down that i got to say at this point i am just -- maybe i should stop, but i'm just scratching my head over this.

the election decisively was over this very argument about the role of government in people's lives. i actually thought the president's inaugural statements were, again, very clear on this point about the importance of the role of government in retirement security. so medicare, social security, in a safety net, in educational opportunity for disadvantaged people. if you go with the ryan budget, which balances in 2040, the house republican budget, you're already taking all of those cuts from low income people. this is far deeper. >> now, yourself and paul krugman have pieces out today in which you talk about how the improving economy proves that austerity doesn't lead to prosperity because in the cases of britain, spain, and italy, as you know, those nations are all back in deep recession. indeed, the nobel laureate calls paul ryan a con man. why would a political party appoint a con man as their chief exist? >> well, i think i can answer that. the theme that paul and i were

both getting at today is that this idea that there is a deficit crisis and we're going to be greece if we don't breach the debt ceiling and impose budgets that cut the government 40% in ten years, the idea behind those crisis mongers is that we have to slash the heck out of social insurance, out of programs that provide educational opportunities for poor people, out of things that push back against economic inequality. we can't afford it. we must cut them. the crisis dictates it. if there is no crisis and, as krugman and i argue, there is no crisis, if there is no crisis, they're just out there in nowhere land by themselves, by the way, without the majority of the electorate behind them. >> very briefly, jared, if you can, eric cantor says taxes are done, no taxes, so i guess another stalemate to come on that? >> i see -- it's hard to see how the budget that's going to come out of the senate, and i think patty murray is going to do a

very good job on that, is going to reconcile with the kind of budgets we're looking at. >> jared bernstein who absolutely deserves the nobel peace prize, thank you, sir, thank you for joining us. and we'll be right back. ♪ alright, let's go. ♪ shimmy, shimmy chocolate. ♪ shimmy, shimmy chocolate. ♪ we, we chocolate cross over. ♪ yeah, we chocolate cross over. ♪ [ male announcer ] introducing fiber one 80 calorie chocolate cereal. ♪ chocolate. 80 calorie chocolate cereal. did you just turn your ringer off so no one would interrupt and.us?one. oh no, i... just used my geico app to get a tow truck. it's gonna be 30 minutes. oh, so that means that we won't be stuck up here, for hours, with nothing to do. oh i get it, you wanna pass the time, huh. (holds up phone) fruit ninja!!!

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and progress of other nations as they, too, have sought to recover over the last five years. some of those nations, like britain and spain, have applied the very policies that mr. ryan would have imposed on this country if he were in the white house alongside a president romney. and so how are those two great nations doing? well, it just so happens that we have some brand new statistics on both these countries. in spain youth unemployment has now reached a record level of 55%. and the overall jobless rate stands at 26%. that's the highest level since the end of general franco a's dictatorship, and as i say, the spanish applied the paul ryan playbook almost word for word, and it hasn't worked out so well. but how about britain? surely the united kingdom must be making some progress.

sadly not. the british government has just announced that its gdp has shrunk to 0.3% and economists now predict a triple dip recession right across the country. again, britain did precisely what paul ryan has been proposing for this country and with disastrous consequences. so are republicans now prepared to accept the evidence? is paul ryan ready to admit that ice. >> da economics would never work in practice? sadly not. in fact, speaker john boehner has just given him the job of drawing up a new budget that will completely erase the federal deficit in just ten years. and only through spending cuts and no new taxes whatsoever. to do this mr. ryan would have to cut every government operation by one-sixth or if he choose not